Well, here we go. If you want some reason for optimism, the Unskewed hack has gone from predicting a massive Romney landslide to merely predicting that Mittens will draw an inside straight, which in a real model is like Obama getting 400 electoral votes. (He seems to be trying the Rasmussen trick of skewing towards Republicans to try to generate a bandwagon effect, and then making the last projection vaguely reasonable.)

I’ll have more on this tomorrow no matter what, but for the record in case Obama wins the electoral college vote and loses the popular vote, the electoral college is an appalling anachronism. This wouldn’t make Obama’s election illegitimate because you can’t change the rules retrospectively, but a bad institution that produces a good result is still bad. Hopefully he’ll win both and make it moot.

Comments (81)

Wow, Romney lost like 80 EVs in less than a week! I suppose he hadn’t properly calibrated his model for The New Black Panther Effect. This makes a lot more sense than the last one if you are trying to sow the seeds of election stealing.

I’m not so sure things would change for the better from a “who’s vote matters more” perspective if NPV were adopted.

The swing states are always pretty diverse, and while eg agricultural subsidies matter a lot more since Iowa is a swing state, giving even more importance to the states in which Wall Street and the tech sector are located would probably be bad.

I don’t think it’s a clear cut case either way; all I’m saying is it’s not a clear cut case.

Although NPV does have the advantage of cutting down the importance of voter suppression in any given state.

Goldman Sachs develops a GOTV unit and Silicon Valley takes a little of the cash used to buy sushi for its interns and hires Greyhound to take people to the polls.

My point is that people tend to think of disregarding the electoral college as an unmitigated good, when it’s more complicated than that. I’m not certain it wouldn’t be better on net than what we’ve got now, but it’s got to be thought through a little bit more, I think.

What’s wrong with Silicon Valley taking people to polls? It’s Democratic territory and a relatively Democratic industry. I don’t want to give finance more power but it’s not like that many people are employed by the industry; what else do they have to offer other than money, which they already do?

The same people who gave special notice that Gore won the popular vote cannot suddenly suggest that Obama losing it is not really overly important given he just worked in the system he was given. Obama would clearly not be illegitimate but it would be sad. FWIW, he probably will win both, but the popular vote will still be too close.

The fact that it would be risible for Rs to go from ‘Sore / Loserman’ to ‘OMG Obama lost popular he should resign to Romney’ doesn’t mean that they won’t manage the feat. What’s one more hemorrhage-inducing bout of cognitive dissonance? It’s like how you lose your gag reflex after you’ve sucked enough Wall Street cocks.

Actually, I hope Obama does win with an electoral-popular split. Maybe if the system screws the Republicans for once, it might actually get changed. And it’s not like there’s such a thing as a “mandate.”

If it were straight popular vote, turnout would be massive, and Dem favoring precincts would generally be the ones that have massive lines, where as those of the Random Randroid would be as reported (a true L, but much sarcasm here):

You guys vote? And what was the experince like?

Mine was great. I parked, and some Dem outside the polling tried to shove some papers in my face. I almost said “get a haircut”, but that would have been more of a TeaParty maneuver.

I blow past him, then get to the entrance and there are 2 lines separated by a rope, and you go to whatever line based on your precinct. One line had like a 20-minute wait, but my line – nothing. I was in the express lane! I breezed past dozens of people waiting in line, I just sign in and go – but the other precinct is at a standstill. It was the best ever.

So I had a 0 minute wait – but even if I had the bad fortune to live in the other precinct, it would have been just a 20 minute wait. What’s with all these stories about people waiting in line for hours and hours? I think it’s all bullshit. Must be the GOP-controlled media trying to make it sound like voting is awful to suppress turnout.

My response:

I love how RR votes in f*cking richville- he probably got a Latte that said “I voted” in whipped cream. Jesus.

His:

What are you talking about? I voted at the country club. Isn’t that where all voting is done?

This was my first experience w/ Washington’s vote-by-mail system. It’s definitely civilized, and it gives you time to investigate the ballot initiatives and local races…but damnit, I love waiting in line and I love putting my ballot in the motron, and I love getting the sticker. Plus, I sent in my ballot the day after it arrived, and I didn’t have anything to do today.

I vote by mail in California. Very civilized, but something’s missing: years ago, you could take your ballot stub to the doughnut shop and get a free doughnut for having voted. No more of that with vote-by-mail, I fear. In a corrupt and venal system, at least one could count on a doughnut…

This is terrible news for my model of the Unskewed Polls guy. I had noticed that his previous projections could be matched with eerie accuracy by following the following steps:
1) Take Nate Silver’s projection of Obama’s electoral votes.
2) Ah, but those are Black electoral votes, so they must be worth only 3/5 of real electoral votes.
3) There are 538 electoral votes, and Romney’s getting the ones Obama doesn’t.
4) Subtract 3/5 of Nate Silver’s Obama prediction from 538.
5) The result had usually been within a couple percent of the Unskewed guy’s predicted electoral vote for Romney.

The problem is, Unskewed Guy is now saying Obama’ll get 263 electoral votes. My process above would only work if Nate Silver had predicted Obama getting 438 electoral votes, which he really hasn’t done.

I guess I’ll have to work on my math. I recommend that the Unskewed guy do the same.

BOCA RATON, FL (BocaNewsNow.com) — A woman attempting to vote in West Boca Raton this morning was initially prohibited from entering the polling place because she was wearing a t-shirt with the letters MIT.

BocaNewsNow.com has heard from multiple sources that an election supervisor at the polling place ultimately realized that MIT stands for “Massachusetts Institute of Technology” — a school where students tend to know how to spell — and was not a campaign shirt for the Republican candidate, who spells his name MITT.

Campaigning is not permitted within several yards of a polling place.

The woman was ultimately allowed to vote.

Woman: But you don’t understand, MIT is an acronym.
Election supervisor: I don’t care how you feel about him, you can’t wear that in here.

“Massachusetts Institute of Technology” — a school where students tend to know how to spell

Actually, the old joke is like this:

A young person is trying to check out in the express lane of a Cambridge, MA supermarket with perhaps two dozen items in their cart. The exasperated clerk turns to them and says “Which is it: you’re from Harvard and can’t count, or you’re from MIT and can’t read the sign?”

(Obviously, MIT students can read, and Harvard students can count. But this is a joke I heard when I attended one of those schools)

This is form of modesty is new and fascinating – I’ve heard of “I went to college in New Haven,” but I’ve never seen someone explicitly say that they went to either MIT or Harvard, but then also refuse to say which one.

Just voted in Culver City, in heavily populated Los Angeles County. There was no line. There were three empty voting booths. We are using the ink blot method. The whole process took less than 15 minutes.

That’s four with basically no results. But of the six reporting a decent fraction of numbers, it’s looking good in four, whereas there’s on that’s tied and one leaning Red but very close. No idea about House pickups overall, but that at least seems encouraging.

So right now, according to TPM, Obama’s margin in Florida is smaller than the total number of votes for Gary Johnson.

It likely doesn’t make a difference, as Florida won’t swing the election (at this point it looks like Obama could win handily without it) but if Romney ends up not winning it because of a third-party spoiler I will laugh and laugh and laugh.